04/17/2024 – Berkshire Gamers Session Report #24-16
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17 for our co-op themed session at the UNO Park Community Center in North Adams.
Our April 24 Session will be SPRING themed – Plants & Flowers, Pollinators & Farming. Our table leaders are preparing for a curated treat for all. Expect to play from among: Honey Buzz, Beez, Pollen, Botany, Bonsai, Living Forest, Forest Shuffle, Planted, Meadow, Three Sisters (with expansion), Tussie Mussie, Dandelions, Cellulose A Plant Cell Biology Game …..and more
4/17/2024 @ UNO Park Community Center
IN: Steve & Sandy, Sean,Wendy & Quinn, Ethan & Amy, Tony & Rachel, Tim, Armando, Anna, Matt, Nicole, Reimi, Chris, Rob O
ON OUR TABLES:
The Crew: Mission Deep Sea (led by Amy) 2021 card game, with the same innovative co-operative trick-taking mechanism as the highly lauded original space-themed game — but with some exciting new surprises! While communication between your crew members is severely limited by your submerged state, it is also critical to your success; finding the hidden land in the murky depths depends not only on winning tricks, but also on carefully negotiating the order in which they are won. If things don’t go as planned, players might just be able to salvage the operation, but it will take near flawless execution and perhaps a little luck to finally reach the lost continent of Mu. Amy reported that the first 3 missions were successful and that it took two tries to win the 4th mission. Trick taking and co-ops are rarely associated together, but The Crew works!
Cahoots (led by Sandy) 2018 game where cards are played to one of four piles by matching color or number. Work together as a team to complete a series of goals — without communicating what’s in their hands. A WIN for the team, so they immediately moved on to Tranquility.
Sky Team (led by Tim) 2023 2-player game in which players are a pilot and co-pilot at the controls of an airliner. Your goal is to work together as a team to land your airplane in different airports around the world. To land your plane, players need to silently assign their dice to the correct spaces in your cockpit to balance the axis of the plane, control its speed, deploy the flaps, extend the landing gear, contact the control tower to clear your path, and even have a little coffee to improve your concentration enough to change the value of your dice. If the aircraft tilts too much and stalls, overshoots the airport, or collides with another aircraft, you lose the game…and your pilot’s license…and probably your life. Tim said that the plane successfully landed to thunderous applause throughout the cabin.
The Game 2x (led by K-ban & Ethan) 2015 multiplayer co-op with limited communication. Players add numbered cards (from 2-99) to 4 piles with 2 of them ascending and 2 descending. Get rid of the entire deck and the team wins. If anyone is unable to play the team loses. We won (with a tiny bit of a mulligan) the first game and came close the second time.
The Game: Face to Face (led by Armando) 2017 2-player version that features gameplay similar to The Game, with players laying down cards from their hand in ascending and descending piles, but now the game is limited to two players who are competing to get rid of their cards first. You want to win on your own, but to advance, you must inevitably help your opponent… (so not quite a co-op but has some co-op elements) On a player’s turn, they’ll play at least 2 cards from their hand of 6. The twist comes from where the cards can be played. Of course, your own ascending and descending piles are fair game and follow the normal rules of The Game, but exactly once per turn, players can play a card on one of their opponent’s piles, breaking all rules. This ultimately helps them out, as it pushes whatever pile you played on away from its upper limit.
Sail (led by Tim) 2023 co-operative trick-taking game with limited communication for two players. Reach the end of this dangerous deep end, and avoid taking damage from the Kraken to win the game together…or your crew will be sleeping with the fish! Before each round begins, players exchange cards, then play a series of tricks. Different game actions will be triggered depending on who wins each trick in combination with the unique character skills. However, the crashing sea water and the roaring Kraken make for a deafening situation, and players are unable to communicate about tactics and card information from the moment cards are dealt to the end of the action phase. Players win the game as a team if they sail their ship into the final token before the Kraken reaches the Death tile or the Kraken deck is exhausted. The Kraken was avoided with the team victorious.
Tranquility (led by Sandy) 2020 card game where the goal is for the team to complete the grid before any player runs out of available actions. Cards must be placed so that the grid ascends in numerical order from bottom left to top right. All the players win if they manage to complete the grid and have placed a Start and Finish card. All players lose if a single player can no longer play or discard any cards legally following the rules. The players may not, however, communicate. The quiet team won and was on a roll!
The Grizzled (led by Anna) 2015 game about survival in the trenches during the first World War where players win or lose together. Each round, the current team leader will choose how many cards every player draws. Then, going around the table, players must either play a card in their hand or back out of the mission. Each card represents either threats to the team (such as mortar shells and weather conditions) or negative personality traits (such as frightened or obsessive). At the end of the round, more cards are added to the draw deck. The game ends only if the players can deplete the draw deck as well as their hands without letting time run out. If one threat shows up too many times, the team fails the mission. The team must play their threats correctly in order to gain any progress. However, most of the information in a player’s hand remains secret throughout the game. According to Anna -the team lost – lead to death in the final assault by a traumatized and tyrannical leader. It was grim but appreciated for its thematic integration.
https://boardgamegeek.com/
Dead of Winter (led by Tim) 2014 meta-cooperative Zombie-themed psychological survival game. Players are working together toward one common victory condition, but for each individual player to achieve victory, they must also complete their personal secret objective, which could relate to a psychological tick that’s fairly harmless to most others in the colony, a dangerous obsession that could put the main objective at risk, a desire for sabotage of the main mission, or (worst of all) vengeance against the colony! Games could end with all players winning, some winning and some losing, or all players losing. Work toward the group’s goal, but don’t get walked all over by a loudmouth who’s looking out only for their own interests! According to Tim, the main objective was accomplished by the group, as 15 Zombies were dispatched and there was a huge colony of survivors with zero deaths. Two players achieved their secret goals.
Atlantis Rising (led by Matt) 2019 worker placement game in which players must work together to deploy citizens across their homeland, gathering resources in order to build a cosmic gate that can save their people. Workers placed close to the shoreline are more rewarding, but are more likely to be flooded and the actions lost. Every turn, each player draws a misfortune card that will flood certain locations along the ever-shrinking Atlantis shoreline, or may otherwise work to undermine efforts to save their people. So players must race to gather the necessary resources to build and power the gate, before the island disappears beneath the waves forever. According to Matt – despite a rough start and one player who shall remain nameless hogging all the good cards, the island only mostly flooded and all necessary Atlanteans were beamed away to some other place with less water. Science!
Paint the Roses 2x (led by K-ban) 2022 Alice in Wonderland themed deduction game where the fickle Queen of Hearts is making not so veiled threats against her gardeners (the players) to make the roses conform to her ever changing whims. Whim cards can be easy (color only), medium (color or shape) or hard (any combo) but have color coded backs. Players in turn place a tile into the garden and everyone else places their colored cubes to indicate the number of matches to their whim card. Each turn the team has to make at least one deducted guess – if correct the gardener miniature advances, if not the Queen of Hearts advances twice as fast as usual. If the Queen catches up to the gardeners – it’s off with their heads! If the garden is completed the gardeners win. We got close but lost our proverbial noggins both times – but were improving on our logic gained through experience.
Tesseract (led by Sean) 2023 game where players manipulate and control an alien artifact before it destroys our world. The focal point of the game is a block of 64 dice, the Tesseract, which sits at the center of the board on a raised platform. Players will remove cubes to place in their individual labs, transfer them as needed to others, adjust the cube’s values and, importantly, isolate the cubes into the containment matrix, neutralizing them. The planet was destroyed as the team lost.
Kites 2x (led by K-ban/Ethan) 2022 game where everyone works together to keep all their kites — represented by colorful sand timers — in the air. Take turns playing cards, flipping the sand timers, and coordinating with other players to ensure none of the timers run out. If it does, a kite has crashed! Play all of the kite cards in the deck, and everybody wins! It is back in print for those interested in securing their own copy. We came within 6 cards of a total victory on first play and got soundly thrashed by the game on subsequent playing.
Steve
17 for our co-op themed session at the UNO Park Community Center in North Adams. Our April 24 Session will be SPRING themed – Plants & Flowers, Pollinators & Farming. Our table leaders are preparing for a curated treat for all. Expect to play from among: Honey Buzz, Beez, Pollen, Botany, Bonsai, Living Forest, Forest…
17 for our co-op themed session at the UNO Park Community Center in North Adams. Our April 24 Session will be SPRING themed – Plants & Flowers, Pollinators & Farming. Our table leaders are preparing for a curated treat for all. Expect to play from among: Honey Buzz, Beez, Pollen, Botany, Bonsai, Living Forest, Forest…